The Somerset herald. [volume] (Somerset, Pa.) 1870-1936, 1887-08-31
How They Do It.

! | have young friend, really talented
fellow, who if he had been east upon the
town would have made place for him
self in literature. He happens to enjoy q
competency, however, and takes life far
| too easily to disturb himself with more
serious employment than the killing Of
| time. He is fond of making literary ex-
/ periments in his more industrious. mo-
ments, and has qnite collection of man
uscript slowed away in his desk, which
he is continually promising himself to
revise and polish up for publication
/ Some of these affairs, stories, sketches,
/ little flrees, fragments OF verse, he has
read TO me, and they have invariably
been sufficiently ingenious in construc-
ton and good in quality to impress them
selves upon my memory.
| Judge my amazement, therefore, when
I | found one of the stories | had listened
to over the cigars and grog in his apart
ments printed in prominent magazine a
week or 50 ago. Judge of my further as
| tonishment when | noted that it was
credited not to the real author but to
certain woman who enjoys quite liter
airy reputation in society, one ofthe swell
amateurs who have made writing for the
press a fashion. There had been sort
of sentimental weakness on my friends
part for this person knew. II was evi-
( dent Eow that it had gone the length of
his lending her his talent to masquerade
in.
got quite collection of her other
stories together, or rather of those she has
been credited with writing, and read them
attentively. There was no mistaking
their authorship Every one bore the
earmarks of my idle amateur. who would
not take the trouble to seek an outlet for
his talent, but was ready to bestow it on
a woman who had caught his platonic
fancy When | next met him | taxed
him with this injustice teshimself, but
he laughed the reprOof lightly OFT
Bless your innocent soul" he said.
"They all do it Do you suppose the
stories Miss Y and Mrs. Y. sign are any
more original with then than Mrs. Us
are with her? The only difference is that
they buy theirs from some professional
scribbles Mrs 2. happens to get hers
for less substantial price"
Curiously enough, only couple Of
nights later, encountered at the theatre
an able literary hack whom | have
known for many years. He looked un-
usually prosperous, considering his old
estate He was be said, earning a good
salary as sub-editor ON a morning paper,
and putting in his own time writing sto-
ries and poetry. As had never seen
any of these in print remarked upon it.
He answered a. little embarrassed:
"Well, you see / don't print them over
my own name"
supposed he meant that he used a
nom de plume, and rs he exhibited no
desire 70 be confidential pressed my in
liO AAsAfh oti4tC tca4iath
that he has for months been supplying
one eff our society geniuses with manu-
script which that person adopts as her
own. She pays him handsomely for the
work, and probably gives the manuscript
away for the sake of getting it into type.
There must be plenty of kindred cases
to these, for the literary craze is fairly
rampant in society, and where two exam
Piles of this form of fraud are to be found
you may be bound that Others exist.
However it is 50 rarely that literature
gets the benefit of fashionable fad that
we can condone an evil that has GER
tain alloy of good. In the excesses to
which vanity will run, this is perhaps the
most curious.-Ihe Joarnalass.